Day 50 Montepulciano

Day 50- Today we decided to go to the closest hill town..for a couple of reasons…1. it was close…2. it had a laundromat (and we had a huge pile of dirty clothes!).  So off we went!  Well, today is Sunday and I think every Italian within 100 miles has decided to come to Montepulciano today!  It was a bit crazy getting into town…but we made it!  We decided to bring our laundry and get it out of the way first.  Not such a good idea…I will explain in a bit! So we found the laundromat and after a bit of button pressing confusion we got our laundry started.  We walked around a bit and just hung out while we waited for the laundry to finish.  After we were done, we took the laundry back to the car and headed back to the town.

As we wound our way through the charming streets, we came to the main square.  There was a street market going on, complete with street musicians playing Christmas carols.  It was like a dream!  We walked around the different tents and looked at all of the food and crafts.  The ironic part was that the longest line was for the tent that was selling cheeseburgers..ugh!

We had such a fantastic time just wandering the streets, until we got hungry.  Well between the laundry and the meandering…it was about 2:00…this is the wrong time to try to eat in Italy!  The first restaurant we went to, they told us they didn’t have room for us and for us to go.  The next restaurant just flat out said “no”.  The next one we came to, we sat at a table, and then the waiter came up and told us they were all out of food…seriously??? The last place we went to told Russ with rolled eyes…they were not serving food right now at all…period!  Okay we get it…bad timing!  I still cannot imagine anyone in the U.S. turning business away…but this is the tradition and the custom here!

Well a bit desperate and a few strings of foul words later, we actually decided to get our own food to take home and make at our apartment.  We got some spices for a pasta sauce, some delicious looking pasta, and some cheese, and we were off!

When we got back to La Falconara, it was like we had landed in a safe little nest!  Reid went out to play with his new best friends…the gaggle of cats out front…including the star of the show for him…Donut!  I cooked pasta, we opened some wine from Alex’s winery…and sat down to our delicious lunch/dinner together.  After dinner, Alex dropped by for a visit and we invited him and his wife to join us for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday night!  He is such an interesting man, easy to talk to and he has so many interesting stories to share!  We chatted with him for quite a while and then off he went.  We decided that we would head off to Cortona the following day…maybe see Frances May and maybe to have an experience “Under the Tuscan Sun”.  We played some cards, drank some limoncello and then headed off to bed!